


Harbour

by fayrose



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/F, Reconciliation, mentions of past rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:12:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1287358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fayrose/pseuds/fayrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max picks up the pieces of her shattered life and fashions them into something better than before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harbour

“What’re you doing here?”

The whole brothel turned to look when Anne Bonny spoke. It was a rare enough occasion that it was something not to miss. Especially when she took that tone. Not that she ever didn’t take that tone.

“You swore you’d stay away.”

All eyes went from Anne to the Eleanor, standing tall and proud in the doorway, her jaw clenched and her icy eyes burning. Only hours before she could no more have left the tavern and lived than she could have walked on water, but now all of Nassau was at her feet again and no one would dare cross her. No one, it seemed, but Anne.

“I’ve not come here to see her,” Eleanor said, her voice confident, calm and controlled in a way it hadn’t been since before this whole sorry mess. No one was in any doubt as to who the ‘her’ she spoke of was. If there had been a soul in Nassau who had not known about Eleanor and Max before, then the last few days had seen to that. “She left some of her things at the tavern. I thought she might want them.”

Anne’s lips curled back and she sucked in a breath trough her teeth, eyes falling to the carpet bag in Eleanor’s hand. “What else?”

Eleanor sighed and rolled her eyes. “A few new things that I’d had made up for her before…”

“ _What else_?”

“A note explaining the new clothes and where they’re from,” Eleanor bit, throwing the bag down before Anne. She raised a single brow and crossed her arms across her chest, smirking. “I can read it to you if you would like.”

An uneasy laughter rose amongst the brothel’s patrons, all of them hearing Eleanor’s barely hidden slight. It was more or less true, Anne could read only what she needed to know which loot to take, but the same could be said for most everyone in Nassau. It was one of the reasons that Eleanor ruled supreme. One among many.

“Fuck that,” Anne muttered, snatching up the bag and stomping up the stairs. “I ain’t your lackey and I ain’t doin’ this again.”

Eleanor smiled. Their performance had gone well. No one would suspect them of conspiring together after that.

…

Max couldn’t stay at the brothel. Not now that Noonan was dead and Rackham was in charge. It was only a matter of time before Vane returned and took over, as was his right as captain, and she could not be there for that. Anne’s plan might have set her free, but it had also made the Ranger crewless. Not even the great Charles Vane could captain an empty ship and Max would once again be the one to bear the brunt of his anger. She wasn’t sure that Anne would even try to protect her. She wasn’t sure that she could.

Whether Anne could stand up to Vane or not, there was no denying that she was a force of nature. She burst into Max’s room with all the fury of a summer storm, muttering darkly about someone taking things too far as she threw a bag at Max’s feet.

“From the cunt.” She said, eyeing Max like she was some strange creature – an unsettling curiosity.

“Eleanor?” Max asked, her tongue curling over the sounds of the name like a prayer. She might hate her for what she had done, but that didn’t make her heart ache for her any less. Eleanor had been her sanctuary in those endless, brutal days. Locked away in her head, she lay in Eleanor’s arms, listening to the sound of her heart beat strong and true, just as she had that last night they had spent together. Without that, fallacy that it was, she did not know if she could have survived it. “She was ‘ere? Eleanor was ‘ere?”

Anne seemed somehow pained by Max’s eagerness. Like it had burned her. But Max knew that she would be just as eager for news if she were in Max’s position and it had been Rackham that had been so close, yet kept from her. “Brought some of your clothes or summin. Told her she couldn’t see you.”

Though Max’s first instinct was anger that someone else was once again deciding what she did and didn’t want, she swallowed it down. She could not fault Anne for upholding what Max herself had claimed to want when she had sent Eleanor away, and this strange protectiveness that Anne had developed for her was not something that Max felt able to spurn. Not with the threat of Vane’s return hanging over her.

“’ow is she?” Eleanor would be fine, she had told herself that Eleanor would be fine. It was childish to think that their parting would see Eleanor’s world fall apart, just as it had hers, but a part of her wanted there to be something, anything that would prove that her lost had cost Eleanor.

“Alive,” Anne shrugged, “but only by the skin of her teeth.”

Cold fear shivered through Max’s body, echoing off every bruise and threatening to overcome her. Hamund had sought to torture her not only physically, but mentally as well. Though she had sought to block out his words, she could not help but hear him repeat Eleanor’s name again and again. Her ears pricked at the sound and though she heard nothing around it, it echoed in her in her mind, Hamund’s voice twisting those precious syllables into something that made her stomach turn.

“What are you talking about?”

“She was stupid, freezin’ us out. Got the other captains scared she would the same to ‘em, so some of ‘em decided it was time to end her choke hold on this place. Then her father stood in front of ‘em and told ‘em all their money was gone. Said if they wanted it back, they should take it up with her.” Anne snorted mirthlessly. “Cold prick threw her to the wolves. They was poundin’ at her doors, they was. Bayin’ for her blood. Shoutin’ all the ways they’d tear her apart and make merry with the pieces.”

It couldn’t be true, Max could not believe it to be true. But Anne had no reason to lie. The thought of what those men would do to Eleanor – _her_ Eleanor, who was so strong yet so naive, so untainted, so vulnerable – made Max’s whole body turn to ice.

“But she’s got guts, I’ll give her that. Went into a room with nothin’ but her wits and a handful of captains and came out queen again. Only catch was, Horingold gave her an ultimatum – lift the ban on the Ranger or he’d call the whole thing off and let every pirate in Nassau do as they please with her.” Anne shook her head, that same look of confusion crossing her face as she got when she looked at Max. “Word is she told him to fuck off, stupid cunt. She knew what they would do to her and still it took her two hours of turnin’ it over in her head before she gave in. Thinkin’ of you, no doubt. I don’t understand her and I don’t understand why you came with us. You was stupid, gettin’ involved with her. You must have known what they’d do to you if she was ever toppled from her throne.”

“She was worth the risk,” Max purred, holding her chin high, challenging Anne to disagree. She was proud of what she had risked for love and proud of Eleanor’s strength in doing the same. There was no doubt in Max’s mind that, though she had not had the courage to say it, Eleanor loved her just as much as she loved Eleanor.

But Anne didn’t understand. She would never understand. “Even after what they did to you?”

“Especially now. The men, they ‘ave let ‘er be?”

“For now. That’s when Hamund came lookin’ for you. Reckon he wanted to get another one over on her. He’s been tauntin’ her over you all week and he couldn’t wait to celebrate her giving in. So I told her to kill him, Hamund, if all her hummin’ and harrin’ over you was worth anythin’.” When Anne laughed this time, it was a true laugh that went right up to her eyes. “When the bitch refused I thought she really was as soft as she looks in those damn skirts and jewels of hers. But no, that ain’t what she is. She didn’t want to just kill Hamind. She wanted to kill the whole bloody lot of ‘em. Had a whole fucking plan for it too. All complex and shit. Must have been thinkin’ about it for days.”

“Eleanor was in involved in this?” Max asked, shocked. “It was ‘er idea?”

“As much as it pains me to admit it,” Anne growled, though she was smiling still. “There’s only one place Guthrie’s soft, and that’s over you. Which makes her as hard as steal when someone crosses you. You should have seen the look in her eyes. She’d have torn them apart herself if she were capable.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“’cos you asked. And ‘cos you’re an even bigger fucking fool if you don’t go back to her.”

 

…

 

Max didn’t leave. Vane was nowhere to be seen and Rackham had no clue how to run a brothel. If she left, the whole place would have fallen apart before the end of the week. He needed her and that meant power where once she had had none. Besides, she had an idea that might bring hers and Eleanor’s business interests together and stop it from ever coming between them again.

“According to this,” Rackham began, his nose in Noonan’s poor excuse for book keeping, “you fetched three times as much for your hand than any other girl. Why exactly was that?”

Max smiled. “Because men want what they cannot ‘ave and they cannot ‘ave Eleanor Guthrie.”

Rackham frowned, turning to glare at Anne who had snorted from beneath her hat. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that from the moment Eleanor bought sole rights to fucking me, every pirate in Nassau was clamouring for my service. Which meant money and lots of it. Supply and demand, you know of this, yes?”

Rackham raised an eyebrow questioningly. “You are leading me to believe that just because Miss Guthrie had a claim on you, they were willing to pay more?”

“Exactly. Show me any man in Nassau and I will show you a man who wants to get one over on ‘er. ‘aving me was their way of doing that. And it did not ‘urt that Max is good at what she does,” Max finished with a smile. She almost missed those days, when Eleanor’s nightly jealousy would burn the touch of every man she had serviced that day from her body. She almost missed the envy in their eyes the next day, knowing that Eleanor and Eleanor alone took Max to bed. It made her feel a little like Eleanor’s queen and every whore in Nassau had resented her for it.

“Seems to me then that I should not be having you as a business partner, but making you get back down on your knees. You were Noonan’s highest earner. Why shouldn’t I make you be mine?” Rackham challenged, and Max wondered what exactly it was that Anne saw in him. Probably, she had to admit, the same thing that she herself saw in Eleanor. They were very much alike, though she, of course, thought Eleanor the better of the two.

“Because my mind is worth more to you than my body.”

Rackham’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”

“I can keep them in line and I can make each and every one of them ten times more valuable to you than they are now,” Max began. “We do for them what having Eleanor’s favour did for me. We protect them. We make it so that anyone who touches them would lose their ‘and. We deny certain services when and where it suits us, and give them more than they could dream of when they least expect it. Do that and they will pay twice as much the next time, and so will all of their friends. If we tell them that our girls are sought after, that they are the best, then they will be. It is all in the suggestion, _mon cher_.”

A sly smile broke out on Rackham’s face. “And here I thought the only thing Miss Guthrie saw in you was a pretty… well everything.” Anne’s hand shot out to strike his arm. “Ow! Bloody hell, woman.”

“Do we ‘ave a deal?”

Still rubbing his arm, Rackham nodded. “Yes, yes. You have you deal. Now get gone before I say anything else to provoke our good friend’s anger.”

Max smiled in satisfaction, noting the hint of a smile peeking out from beneath Anne’s hat. “It would be my pleasure.”

 

…

 

Now that it was done, Eleanor was at a loss. For more than a week, her every waking thought – and dream too for what it was worth – had been of Max. Of her face, her name, the sight of her battered and broken, the sound of her voice, her screams. It had haunted her, taunted her. She had come apart with it and found in it the strength to carry on.

When Max had still been close, her lips finding Eleanor’s neck and her hands always seeking Eleanor’s skin, it had been easy to keep her head clear. When Max had clouded her thoughts, she sought her out and had her fill. It was easy to ignore that lust had turned to obsession, and obsession to love when Max’s supple body and sweet words were there to sate her ever raging desire and her heart both. Her every breath had been for Max, yet she had not known it. Not until Max had said ‘I love you’ and her whole world had fallen apart.

“And now I can’t even keep my own fucking books,” Eleanor grumbled, dropping her head into her hands and keening when a knock sounded at her door. “Fuck the fuck off.”

Hissed voices rose from the other side of the door, before a set of heavy footsteps trailed back into the bar.

“Thank fuck,” Eleanor murmured, before raising angry eyes to the doorway when the hinges creaked and the door swung open. “What part of ‘fuck of’ don’t you-”

Curses died on her lips when she saw that it wasn’t O’Malley or a captain with a bone to pick, but the last person she had expected to ever walk into her study again.

“I thought that it was about time that we talked,” Max said softly, letting the door close with a click behind her.

Eleanor rose to her feet and froze.

Looking at her now, you would almost never guess what she had been through. Only the slight darkening of bruises not quite hidden and the wrongness in the shape of her lips, still swollen, gave her away. Her hair was braided and beautiful, woven with pretty trinkets that glittered in the candlelight and tied with a blue ribbon that Eleanor had cut herself from a ream of stolen silk. She wore a dress to match, one that Eleanor had had made up for her. It was less revealing than her working clothes, but not by much. Eleanor knew better than to try to get her to cover up like some jealous lover and she had always appreciated the view too much to clothe her too fully. That Max had chosen to wear it set Eleanor on edge. She had half expected to find the clothes she had sent to her floating in the waves. The last thing she had expected was for Max to come to her, dressed to the nines.

Like damned fool, Eleanor could think of nothing to say. Her brain emptied at the sight of Max and it took every ounce of will she had not to bloody well cry for what she had been through and what they had lost. This was what Max reduced her to. The only clear thought in her head was how fucking beautiful Max looked, like an apparition, an angel. But Eleanor couldn’t very well tell her that. It would likely only earn her a slap. She half expected that was coming her way regardless of what she said. It was the only thing that kept her from running to Max and holding her tighter than she had ever felt compelled to hold anyone before.

“Are you..?” she breathed, her heart like a drum in her ears. She swallowed, her mouth sand-dry. “How are you?”

Max shrugged but did not speak and Eleanor wondered if Max had wanted her to run to her.

“I hear that you’re helping Rackham run the brothel,” Eleanor tried. She didn’t need Max to confirm it, they both knew that. One of her men had been enjoying the pleasures that the place had to offer when Max had disciplined one of the girls and made herself indispensable to Rackham. It was a smart move, but Eleanor couldn’t quite believe that Max had made it. The men of Nassau raised their hands to the women often enough without women doing the same. It was a matter of pride to Eleanor that though she would not think twice before swinging her fist at a man, she would never touch a woman. There was no honour in that.

“ _Oui_. For now.” Max’s voice held none of the softness that it once had, but there was something kind gleaming in her eyes that gave Eleanor hope. “’e needs me and Vane is not ‘ere. When ‘e comes back, it will all change, I ‘ave no doubt.”

Eleanor’s jaw set and her hands fisted and the mention of Charles Vane. Him she would very much enjoy lashing out at. “Let me worry about Charles. If he touches you - if he so much as _raises his voice_ to you – I will put him in the ground myself.”

Max didn’t flinch at the cold anger in Eleanor’s voice, nor was she surprised at her words, not after what Anne had told her. Eleanor’s plan had been bold in the extreme and she had put not only her life on the line by proposing it, but a good deal of her quickly vanishing fortune as well.

“That is why I am ‘ere. Anne told me what you did. I told you that I did not want your help yet still you did it. Why?”

“You were right. I was the one that did that to you. They told me that you had chosen it, but I knew that wasn’t true. I left you no choice and men like Hamund can never be stopped. Not once they’ve tasted power like he had over you. No woman on the island was safe with him and his men prowling the beaches.”

“And you could not let them think they ‘ad beaten you,” Max added.

Eleanor shivered. Max always saw right to the heart of her. “That too.”

Max nodded. She had expected nothing less and she did not resent her for it. “I understand. It is a precarious life we lead in this world ruled by strength and violence.”

All the anger left Eleanor and she looked quite like she had in Max’s room the day she had betrayed her – lost and afraid. “I should have done it sooner. Should have stopped them from ever-”

“’Should have’ will get us nowhere,” Max interrupted, the hardness in her tone giving way to exasperation and then determination. “It is what we do now that matters. I ‘ave a proposition for you.”

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed, suddenly wary. This was not how she had expected this conversation to go and she did not like it when people strayed from the expectations she had of them. It meant that her contingency plans were less than useless. “What are you talking about?”

“I think that we can ‘elp each other,” Max proposed, leaving her spot by the door and moving more fully into the room. “Your rule here is tenuous, you know this. One more turn of events like the last week and you could be unseated once more. I ‘ave the information that you need to keep the captains in line.”

Eleanor narrowed her eyes and Max thought again how very alike she and Rackham were. “What information?”

“I know ‘ow they get their pleasure. There is not one among them that does not ‘ave some secret perversion that they wish to keep quiet from their crew and their rivals.”

She watched as Eleanor moved around her desk and stood before it. “Go on.”

Max smiled, knowing that she had won Eleanor over even before Eleanor herself realised it. “I will keep their secrets for as long as they keep to their deals with you. If they defy you, I will threaten to spill them.”

Eleanor frowned, crossing her arms before her and leaning back against the desk. “What if they stop coming to the brothel?”

“I already ‘ave information on all of your captains and their quartermasters, most of their crewmen too. They ‘ave nothing to gain by not coming back,” Max reasoned, “and all the pleasure in the world to gain from doing so.” Moving forward, Max laid out her plan. “I can sit in in your negotiations, if you wish, and you will of course pay me for my services. The captains will know that I ‘ave something over them and they will ‘ave to do as you tell them if they want their secrets kept. I know also some of their other secrets. Ones they let slip to try to impress me. Prizes they kept for themselves. I know who you can trust and who will try to steal the pesos from your pocket when you are not looking.” She was right in front of Eleanor now and she held out her hand. “So, what do you say? Do we ‘ave a deal?”

Eleanor’s sly smile sent pleasure rushing through Max’s veins. It was a plan worthy of Eleanor herself, and it was plain to see that Eleanor very much enjoyed that Max had thought of it.

“On one condition,” Eleanor purred. She took Max’s hand and, instead of shaking it, brought it up to press her lips to Max’s palm, her eyes never leaving Max’s. “You let me issue with protection.”

Max’s stomach fluttered and for a moment it was as if none of the last week had happened. “I can live with that.”

“Excellent.” Eleanor moved away, leaving Max standing there with her hand hovering in mid-air, blinking furiously and watching as Eleanor went over to her drinks cabinet and pulled out a dark, old-looking onion bottle and two cut crystal tumblers, ever a woman of contradictions.

“We should toast,” Eleanor declared, pouring a dram of the blackest rum that Max had ever seen into first one glass and then the other. “No deal should go uncelebrated.”

Max smiled as she took the glass Eleanor offered to her and as one they clinked their glasses together and threw back the ink-black liquid.

“ _Mon Dieu_ ,” Max coughed, barely able to speak with the red-hot rum burning down her throat, “that is foul.”

Eleanor snorted and poured them both some more. “I admit that I have been drinking a bit more than I should of late, to forget the merry mess I made. As a consequence, my tastes have turned towards the stronger of the rums in my possession.”

The look that Max gave her then was one they had shared before. Eleanor had always been one to drown her sorrows in drink and Max had never liked it, always preferring to draw Eleanor’s attention away onto more pleasant things. Eleanor crumbled under that look, just as she always did, but she was spared from closer scrutiny by sound of glass smashing in the tavern, followed by the ruckus of a fight and the shouted assertion from O’Malley that he could deal with it.

In the moment that Eleanor’s attention had been diverted elsewhere, tugged on again by the stresses of her position, Max had made her decision. She took Eleanor’s hand and gently led her in the opposite direction to the tavern and her responsibilities, leading her out instead onto the balcony terrace out behind her study.

“I think,” she began as they emerged into the cool night air, “that perhaps this is a drink best shared in more… private surroundings.”

When she turned back to Eleanor, she found the woman unable to meet her gaze.

“’ow ‘ave you been?”

At that Eleanor turned and leant her weight on the railings, looking out to sea. “I suppose you’ve heard about my little fall from grace.”

“Anne might ‘ave mentioned it,” Max said softly. “I was sorry to ‘ear about it and sorrier that I was not ‘ere to ‘elp.”

“What with that and...” Eleanor stopped and chanced a glance at Max. “Let’s just say that it’s been one hell of a week. Emphasis on _hell_.” Realising what she had said, Eleanor paled. “Not that it has anything on yours. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that...” She shook her head and knocked back her drink. “I’ll just shut the fuck up now.”

Smiling, Max sidled up beside her, resting her arms beside Eleanor’s and leaning close enough that she could hear Eleanor’s shaky breaths. “Do I still make you nervous, even after all that we ‘ave shared?”

Eleanor laughed mirthlessly and looked away. “I don’t know who I am when I’m around you. Then when you’re not here, I feel even less like myself, like you’ve changed me and now I can never go back.”

Max’s hand curled around Eleanor’s arm. “Is that what you were afraid of? That you were losing yourself?”

Eleanor could not help but let her eyes be drawn to Max’s hand on her arm. It was a touch so simple that made her face burn from the loss of all the touches that had gone before. “No… I was afraid… I was afraid that it was all in my head. That I was just another client foolish enough to believe that I was different, that you cared about me. No one has ever cared about me just because before. Why should you be any different?”

“Oh, ma Chérie. Of course I am different.” Max sighed. If she had known that this was what stood between them, she would have done everything so very differently. “I told you that I would be your ‘arbour, but it is you who was mine. I knew from the first moment that I saw you.”

Eleanor’s eyes shone with tears that she refused to shed and she looked away, letting the dark, growling sea once again take her gaze. “And I fucked it all up. Just like I fuck everything up.”

“On that I cannot disagree,” Max conceded, “but you still are not listening to what I ‘ave said. Yes, you ‘urt me. You ‘urt me more than I ever thought it was possible to ‘urt, but I _love_ you, Eleanor, and I am going nowhere without you. I was wrong to try to leave my ‘arbour.”

A choked sob fell from Eleanor’s lips and she smiled, turning back to meet Max’s tender expression. She had never thought that she would hear Max say those three beautiful words again after how badly she had fucked up. They gave her hope. Hope that she could survive this and be the person that Max swore that she could be. The kind of person who says things like ‘I love you’ and hears them in return.

Biting her lip, she turned from the cold sea and let her body fall instead against Max’s warmth. She lifted her hand to Max’s cheek and laid it there so very softly, afraid of wakening the bruises beneath her palm. Bruises that she had caused, if not with her own hand then with her betrayal. Seeing her hesitancy, Max brought her own hand up to cover Eleanor’s pressing it more firmly against her cheek.

“I’ve been so lost without you,” Eleanor choked. “Everything went to shit the moment I betrayed you. The sea was so fucking rough and I realised that the one person that I wanted to turn to was you, and you weren’t there. I’d seen to that.”

“You mean it?” Max asked, hope shining so fiercely in her eyes that it broke Eleanor’s heart.

“I mean it,” Eleanor swore, leaning closer, breathing her in, nearly but not quite close enough to kiss. She couldn’t, wouldn’t be the one to do that. “I love you,” she breathed, “always have. I was just too stupid – too proud – to see it.”

“Then you ‘ave not lost me,” Max whispered. “Or your ‘arbour.”

With those sweet words hanging between them, Max closed the gap that Eleanor could not, brushing her lips soft and gentle against Eleanor’s, letting her know that it was okay, that she wanted this. With that encouragement, Eleanor’s arms went around Max’s waist, pulling her flush against her as she bent to her head to breathe into Max all of the words that she could not say. Every many-coloured nuance of feeling that she had no way of expressing with speech. Every apology. Every promise. Everything that she had she poured into the sweetest kiss they had ever shared and in that moment, both of their worlds fell back into place. What was broken could be fixed and this time it would be better than before. Much, much better.

 


End file.
